Excellent HIFI CD Player for sale

[Mehen]

Well, I think it has to do with the jitter caused by the optical conversion circuitry

[Mehen]

also, found a site that shows some other Shanling products along with their respective prices.

http://www.soundlabsgroup.com.au/shanling/index.htm

/me drools

now THAT is a CD player!!

[GuchiGuh]

dude, that thing costs 10 grand.....
but hell, i'd take one if i had the money sweet!!

[Mehen]

I don't think you even have to use speakers, it beams the sound straight into your brain.

Of course, the hardcore vinyl people will still say a record sounds better.

[az]

Of course, all the sane people will still say that doesn't sound like a 5000% difference over a 200 EUR player.

[Jammrock]

which output is most commonly used in hifi these days?

Depends on how much of a mutjob you are. If your CD player is transport + D/A converter (which 99.99% of CD players are), then RCA is used. Digital is only used when you have a better D/A converter in a seperate component or you are recording something and not using a computer.

The 0.01% use a seperate tranport and D/A converter. The transport, quite literally, only reads the digital data and transports said data to a seperate component, via digital coax, which then converts the digital data to a usable analog signal. This is the hardcore audiophile setup, and I won't go into the details why people do it, as it would bore 50% of MURC, makes 49% of it laugh, and make 1% go "huh, cool ... but crazy."

A high-end serperate transport and D/A setup typically starts around $2k USD ($1k for transport, $1k for D/A), but most of them run greater than $10k for a set. For the record, I have a Rotel RCD-1070, which was the last Rotel CD player to us Burr Brown DACs from the pre-TI buy out.

Speaking of Burr Brown, one of the reasons high end CD players cost so much are because of better capacitors, better transports (less jitter), better power suppliers and better D/A converters. Anything Burr Brown is typically more expensive. SOme transports cost $1k just for the the laser and CD mount portion (made by Sony, btw, and the disc moves across the laser, and not the other way around).

Jammrock

[Mehen]

my dad is using a Roksan Caspian MK1 as a transport and a Perpetual Technologies P-3A DAC. Most people use a 75ohm RCA cable in between trans/dac (which is what he is as well).
He also has a pair of Quad ESL-63's, an Audio Research D70 Power Amplifier, and a Counterpoint Pre-Amp (can't remember what model off hand). The power & pre are all tube (the preamp even has a tubed powersupply).
If you are in the Winnipeg area, let me know and stop by for a listen.

[az]

Speaking of Burr Brown, one of the reasons high end CD players cost so much are because of better capacitors, better transports (less jitter), better power suppliers and better D/A converters. Anything Burr Brown is typically more expensive. SOme transports cost $1k just for the the laser and CD mount portion (made by Sony, btw, and the disc moves across the laser, and not the other way around).

Most transports are actually from Philips, and many players use cheap PC transports, anyway, even many high end ones. The DACs cost well <10 EUR a piece, even if they are Burr Brown. Capacitors run in the cents, even very good ones.
My self-built headphone amp uses a Burr Brown Opamp which cost me about 3 EUR, and I bought one, and not ten thousand, and the very high quality Wima film capacitors also only cost me cents.
I dare anybody to confidently and reliably identify a 10k EUR CD player from a well-made and relatively recent 500 EUR player in a double blind test with properly tuned volume.

TOSLINK is the most used now, because most portables only have that (if any), most PC soundcards use it (if any), many CD players with only one digital out use that, likewise with DVD players. It also has the advantage of a thinner cable and not being able to induce a ground loop.

[Mehen]

I would take that dare. If you are playing them both (the 10k and 500) on say 500 speakers you might not notice a difference, but if you are playing them on 10k speakers as well, you WILL notice a difference.
My Dad's Roksan Caspian (cd player) would have been over $2000 USD new (he bought it used) and his DAC was over $1000 USD. I have listened to it compared to countless other CD players that he has auditioned, ranging from a few hundred to a few thousand. You notice a difference.

Also, as for capicator's, he recently replaced a bunch of the smaller ones in his power amp, they were about $12 a piece (don't even want to know how much it would be to get the big ones replaced).

You are right about the PC transports though, they do work very well and are actually sold in some moderately hi-end CD players & kits. Bit of a pain in the ass though, as some of them are very loud and some offer very little in the way of controlling them. Sound is generally very good. Usually quite detailed, sometimes a little too bright and too digital sounding. Technically accurate but there always seems to be a bit of something missing.

Very few hifi listeners will use a TOSLINK cable in their system, although for computers etc they are more popular.

[schmosef]

Ahh, but could you tell the difference between a $100 hamburger and one... (well, you get the idea)

Yes, yes, the joke is getting old. I still think it's funny...

[Umfriend]

Ahh, but could you tell the difference between a $100 hamburger and one... (well, you get the idea)

Yes, yes, the joke is getting old. I still think it's funny...

I think it is getting better all the time

[az]

I would take that dare. If you are playing them both (the 10k and 500) on say 500 speakers you might not notice a difference, but if you are playing them on 10k speakers as well, you WILL notice a difference.
My Dad's Roksan Caspian (cd player) would have been over $2000 USD new (he bought it used) and his DAC was over $1000 USD. I have listened to it compared to countless other CD players that he has auditioned, ranging from a few hundred to a few thousand. You notice a difference.

I think you couldn't, but let's revise the test a bit: Exclude components (especially the players themselves) that are "sounded" to sound "better" (but are not actually correct - take, for instance, a CD player with a tube analogue stack: It WILL introduce distortion, thus actually playing less correct than any well-made cheap player. If you allow something like this, you might as well allow equalizers and exciters). Of course, the rest of the components would be of high quality. You couldn't tell the difference, and you couldn't say with any certainty which of the players is the expensive one, if you didn't know which one was playing, I'm sure.

Also, as for capicator's, he recently replaced a bunch of the smaller ones in his power amp, they were about $12 a piece (don't even want to know how much it would be to get the big ones replaced).

I'm not talking about what High-End consumers get to pay.

You are right about the PC transports though, they do work very well and are actually sold in some moderately hi-end CD players & kits. Bit of a pain in the ass though, as some of them are very loud and some offer very little in the way of controlling them. Sound is generally very good. Usually quite detailed, sometimes a little too bright and too digital sounding. Technically accurate but there always seems to be a bit of something missing.

How do you think that is possible for a device that reads ones and zeroes only (and correctly, because for data this has to be correct)?

Very few hifi listeners will use a TOSLINK cable in their system, although for computers etc they are more popular.

Very few "High-End" listeners will use a TOSLINK cable in their system, a lot of Hi-Fi listeners do.

[Umfriend]

On spotting differences, I can identify a Marantz SA-17 from a Denon DVD2900 (did that test). But then, there is a huge differnce between distinguisih "quality" over "sound". I _liked_ the Marantz better.

Yesterday I accidently re-stripped my speaker cables. I imagined that the exposed cable would by now (after some 3 years) have corroded quite a bit. Man, was I right. Small things do make a difference to me (and in this case it definately became "better").

What I've seen is that the SACD player from Shanling uses Buur Brown PCM1738s. This player, I strongly suspect, converts DSD to PCM before going to analog. A shame for such an expensive player.

[Jammrock]

I've done several blind listening tests of CD players. I was going to buy a Denon CD player, or possibly a Denon universal player, when I heard my Rotel. After listening to both the Rotel had an obviously better sound. And at the time I had never even heard of Rotel before and was a huge Denon fan, so I had no preconcieved consepctions as to what "should have" sounded better.

What I've seen is that the SACD player from Shanling uses Buur Brown PCM1738s. This player, I strongly suspect, converts DSD to PCM before going to analog. A shame for such an expensive player.

This is common. The circuitry and chipsets to go straight from DSD to analog are more expensive than going to PCM and then to analog. You almost have to go high end Sony or an audiophile brand to get true DSD to analog these days.

As for cost per component goes, you have to factor in that each raise in component price qill raise the MSRP by a factor of 4 or 5. So while going with Burr Brown versus SI might only cost $5 or 5 EURO more at the component level, that will raise the final price by at least $20/20Euro. Add in higher grade capacitors (which can run several dollars/euros per capacitor, as Mehen said, $12 per capacitor or more depending on capacitence, voltage, type of materials used, etc.) and you've added a potential of several hundreds more after mark up. And you get the point... Plus you have to factor in that most audiophile houses don't have large corporate backing and sell at a lower volume, so they have to mark up their prices even further to make back their R&D money and remain profitable.

Not that I'm justifying the purchase of a $25k USD CD player setup, because I think that's obscene for even my tastes, just saying that's how things go. I've seen $20k turn tables (the one in the first Tomb Raider movie is a $15k one I believe) and $5k phono cartridges, $125k speakers (per front pair), $50k amps (2 x mono amps) and the list goes on.

But then again, there are million dollar sport cars that will never reach their top estimated speed. Watches that cost tens of thousands of dollars. Suits that cost just as much or more. Yachts worth tens of millions. Golf course memberships taht cost hundreds of thousands a year. Houses worth tens of millions. And if someone with more maney than they know what to do with wants to drop $250k on a home theater ... so be it. It's their money after all.

Jammrock

[az]

The PCM1738 cost approx. 5.25$, according to the TI website, which means they cost less than five in practice. And 12$ for a capacitor is AFTER markup, Jamm.